How the craving for pleasure decreases our capacity to enjoy that very pleasure
We live in a culture where pleasure is promised to us from countless directions, especially through commercials and media. Amid all this aggressive propaganda and the craving it fuels within our hearts and minds, we often forget a vital truth: to enjoy any pleasure, we need not just an enjoyable object, but also a somewhat peaceful mind.
When desire for pleasure excites and agitates us excessively, it steals our peace of mind and, thereby, diminishes—if not destroys—our capacity to fully experience the pleasure we seek. For example, if we crave a delicious food item, even if the food is as tasty as we fantasized, we’re so eager for the next morsel that our attention becomes divided between what we’re enjoying in the present moment and what we’ll get to enjoy next. The greater the agitation, the less satisfaction we feel. Bhagavad-gita 2.65 echoes this idea with the rhetorical question, “How can those who lack peace ever have happiness?” We may experience some sensory stimulation, but it remains superficial because the mind’s agitation prevents us from truly enjoying even that desirable object, let alone anything else.
Suppose we are having a conversation with intelligent, loving people around us while eating some delicious food. If we are agitated by craving for a particular food item, we cannot fully savor the taste of that food or relish the wisdom and affection shared in the conversation. Thus, it’s vital to free ourselves from the illusion that increasing desire leads to increasing pleasure.
Certainly, some amount of desire is required as energy to pursue activities that can lead to pleasure. But often, the desires that are stirred within us—whether by cultural imagery or by fantasies fueled by an impure mind—actually deplete our capacity to enjoy. The more we realize this truth, the more we’ll direct our endeavors toward inner and spiritual growth, which can calm and cleanse our minds. Only through such calming and cleansing of the mind can we truly experience and enjoy pleasure in its fullness.
The benefits from this are twofold: at one level, a calm and cleansed mind helps us enjoy material pleasures more fully and enables us to appreciate a wider variety of them, as our consciousness is no longer fixated on any single object as a source of pleasure. Additionally, calming and cleansing the mind opens us to an entirely new universe of higher, spiritual pleasures, as we become more steadily and deeply connected in love with the all-attractive, all-loving divinity who is the reservoir of all happiness.
Summary:
- Today’s aggressive cultural propaganda fuels desires that steal our peace of mind, reducing our ability to enjoy even material pleasures.
- Intense craving for one thing can blind us to other meaningful or joyful experiences, leaving us with only superficial titillation undermined by anxiety.
- By freeing ourselves from the illusion that more desire brings more pleasure and by pursuing a calmer mind, we can better experience material pleasures and access higher spiritual joys.
Think it over:
- Recall an incident when you couldn’t enjoy something you had strongly craved.
- Do you have any experience where intense craving for one thing blinded you to other meaningful or joyful things?
- What are two ways in which calming and cleansing our mind can benefit us in our search for happiness?
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02.65 For one thus satisfied [in Kṛṣṇa consciousness], the threefold miseries of material existence exist no longer; in such satisfied consciousness, one’s intelligence is soon well established.
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